Many people aren’t all that familiar with the adult beverage known as mead, which is a form of wine that is made from honey rather than grapes. I’m a brewer, and not much of a wine maker, but I figured I’d try my hand at making a batch of mead.

I have to declare my experiment only a partial success. Success in the sense that I have something alcoholic, that isn’t disgusting to drink, but only partial in the sense that it has a lot of autolytic notes. That’s usually a result of leaving the fermented product on the yeast cake too long, and not racking into another fermenter often enough. I certainly am guilty of getting lazy with this batch. I started this batch late last winter, racked it to secondary in late spring, put it off into a corner and kind of forgot about it until earlier this week.

Fortunately, my friend Gene tells me that autolytic notes are a feature of champaign, so I decided to actually keg the mead, and charge it with some carbonation. If the mead is sparkling, it might actually taste correct for that style. One thing is for sure, at least, it’s effective stuff. I drank a little of the leftovers, and I’m doing pretty well right about now.